Warning: If you stay here long enough you will gain weight! Grazing here strongly suggests that you are either omnivorous, or a glutton. And you might like cheese-doodles.
BTW: I'm presently searching for another person who likes cheese-doodles.
Please form a caseophilic line to the right. Thank you.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

GREAT ROAD KILL STATE

A friend and colleague is moving to Texas. Naturally we gathered to drink him under the table in farewell. I'm not sure we succeeded - he's a hardened twenty something, and you know how dissipated that lot are - but if you had overheard our conversation while we were trying to get him hammered, you might pity Texas.

"Dude, you should buy a Glock 17.""Why?""Because the ammo is available everywhere; Ohio, Estonia, Glasgow..... ""So you're saying that it's an unimaginative weapon? I think I'd rather have something unique.""No no no, man, suppose you get attacked by penguins, and there you are, without any ammo.....""Penguins in Texas?""Well, say somewhere else - Alabama or the Congo, look, the idea is that you don't want the penguins to win!""Then if I'm attacked by penguins, all I have to do is go to the nearest Walmart....?""Exactly! Blam blam blam!"

"While you're there, get a gun rack.""I don't even have a pickup truck, why should I get a gunrack?""For your bike or whatever - you don't want the natives to think you're wussy.""How on earth would they know I'm from California?"

"Hey, get one of those things they have all over Texas, you know, that thing, what's it called ..... ?""Roadkill?""No, not roadkill, but that reminds me, you should get a stuffed armadillo holding a beer can. They got those too. It's like a cottage industry or sumpin' ""Okay."

5 Comments:

Having spent a year traveling to Texas off and on for work, I will say that the stereotypes are all crap. The first time I rolled out of the rental car agency on to the freeway, what do I see, but a poster advertising the Texas mandatory seat belt law!

Then I rented a boat and went sipping around the lake. What did I see, but all the god ole boys zooming around in their fancy overpowered bass boats wearing PFDs! What is this place, some kind of nanny state?

Then I went to San Antonio and found a vegetarian restaurant:

http://greensanantonio.com/

(It's kosher, to, by the way.)

And there are at least two Irish pubs in San Antonio, so the Guinness flows freely in the Lonestar State, but if you want to drink beer, you should sample Shiner Bock.

Sure, I got a good case of reflux from the BBQ and Tex-Mex, but I also ate lots of French food, too. Funny, though, I was never able to find a good steak anywhere, though And they make wine, in fact may favorite Texas wine is a Becker Chardonnay. And Whole Foods is headquartered in Texas, too.

"I mean it's bad enough that some Texans have odd stereotypes about people from San Fransisco, why do the people from San Fransisco need to return the favor?"

Because, my dear CA, it's bucket-loads of fun. And all American, in fact.

Regional stereotypes are almost entirely harmless, and moreover good carriers of humour. All of our great writers have done it - Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Steinbeck, O'Henry, Twain.....

One could even argue that it goes back to the very roots of our "gedachtengoed" ('thought capital'). Swift did it, Shakespeare, many unwashed Froggish persons..... Even so great a writer as Gerbrand Adriaenszoon van Brederode engaged in the practice - his steller play 'Den Spaanschen Brabander' (The Spanish Brabander - which recounts the misadventures in the North of a refugee from the occupied South) is a rich source of foul stereotyping and nasty regionymics for over fifty kinds of Germans, in addition to riotous deconstructing of Brabantish and Flemish self-images. And he himself was, in fact, Brabantish and Flemish, the son of refugees in the North.

And that, tayere CA, explains why - it tells us more about ourselves than of the purported targets; they are in actual fact mere instruments for our self reflection.

"While you're there, get a gun rack.""I don't even have a pickup truck, why should I get a gunrack?""For your bike or whatever - you don't want the natives to think you're wussy." "How on earth would they know I'm from California?"

And there you have it – a stereotype. How, indeed, would he be Californian?

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About Me

Middle-aged, but younger looking than you. And hardly any arthritis. Really.
Resident of the Bay Area, though formerly of somewhere in the Netherlands - living in Europe with a US passport can be an adventure.
I should also mention that I am not a Red-Sea pedestrian. Make of that what you will.